• Officials defy Mugabe's ultimatum, hang onto farms
• Zimbabwe police raid paper offices, seek equipment
• Up to Nigeria to invite Mugabe to Commonwealth: SA
• Row brews in Commonwealth over Mugabe summit snub
• S African anger over Mugabe ban
• Zim keen on jumbo rescue
• Fence likened to African Gaza Strip
• Government's Closure of Independent Newspaper Gags Press Freedom
• ANZ officials submitted registration and application forms
• Daily News closure remains indefinite
• Hunting barred, chefs told

Officials defy Mugabe's ultimatum, hang onto farms

Wilson Johwa

Bulawayo - A government report into Zimbabwe's controversial land reform
programme has opened a can of worms, throwing the spotlight on corruption
surrounding the ownership of multiple farms by senior government officials
and others close to the establishment. To date only one politician has
publicly surrendered his extra farms to the state, a month after the expiry
of a two-week deadline set by President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe's deadline
marked his first response to the damning report by the Presidential Land
Review Committee that he appointed in May to assess the success of his
government's controversial land reform programme. The report reveals gross
irregularities and corruption in the allocation of land since the "fast
track" land reform programme began in 2000. In addition, it is said to
expose the exaggeration that over 300,000 landless families had been
resettled. Prompted by this report - and two others before it - President
Mugabe on Jul. 30 gave his party colleagues with multiple farms until Aug.
13 to relinquish the extra properties. To date only Obert Mpofu, the
governor of the Matabeleland North province, declared he was surrendering
two state farms he had leased in the productive Nyamandlovu area. He retains
a farm he bought before the land reform programme began. However, Mpofu is
understood to have recently taken over two hunting concessions, Railways
Farm 40 and farm 41 located on the edge of the country's biggest game
reserve, the 14,000-hectare Hwange National Park. In the rest of the
country's nine provinces, officials have maintained a deafening silence over
surrendering their extra properties. The chairperson of the ruling Zanu PF
party, John Nkomo, has said 30,000 hectares have been surrendered
countrywide by multiple farm owners and that more land was due to be given
up.

However, the opposition is unconvinced, insisting that Mugabe's directive
has largely been ignored, an indication that he has lost all moral sway
among his colleagues who now see him as being on the way out. Paul Themba
Nyathi of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says due to the
heightening discussion on when Mugabe will leave office, his underlings view
the 79-year-old leader as a lame duck whose days are numbered hence see no
reason why they should do his bidding. "His power has been whittled because
of the succession debate," Nyathi says. "He has no moral authority because
they know what he himself has done (corruptly)." However, speaking when he
officially received the report on Sep. 11, Mugabe has promised to act on the
recommendations of the Presidential land Review Committee, a hint that he
may sack those of his Cabinet members implicated in the report. In power for
23 years, Mugabe is seen as the stumbling block to a return to normalcy in
Zimbabwe, presently in the throes of a political and economic crisis.
However, analysts say his retirement is now unavoidable and will come as
soon as he manoeuvres a successor who will protect him against an expected
backlash. Political analyst Lovemore Madhuku says there is no way there can
be a return of these farms under the current regime which he says is tainted
by corruption. He says no politician will return the farms knowing his
colleagues are corrupt too, be it in other areas. "No-one in Zanu PF has a
moral high ground to impose the rules," he says. "Land is merely one area of
their massive corruption enterprise." A farm in Zimbabwe is the ultimate
prize for a career in politics. Almost the entire leadership in government
and within the ruling Zanu PF party is known to have at least one farm each.

Since May 2000 when the government lost a crucial referendum on a new
constitution, it has embarked on a crude and rather populist land reform
exercise, shortly before a crucial parliamentary election it was projected
to lose. The reason for the land reform exercise was to correct colonial
injustices in landownership which was one of the main reasons Zimbabweans
fought a 15-year-long bush war that culminated in independence in 1980.
However, coming 20 years after independence and with no clear criteria on
intended beneficiaries, many of the choice farms have ended up in the hands
of government officials, judges and other well-connected individuals. Some
of these new farmers have earnestly tried their hand at their newest
calling. But not enough, apparently. Revelations this month that the
Zimbabwe National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ZNSPCA)
was prosecuting former Central Bank governor Kombo Moyana following the
death of 55 head of cattle at his farm, showed how little value some of
Zimbabwe's powerful have attached to the land they got so easily. The ZNSPCA
said the animals, part of a herd of 300, had died a slow death at Moyana's
Olympia Farm on the outskirts of the capital Harare because of a shortage of
grazing and water. Moyana is being charged under the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals Act which attracts a maximum fine of 20,000 Zimbabwe dollars
(about 5 U.S. dollars) or six months imprisonment or both. The country's
land reform exercise has largely been blamed for the fact that agro-exports
have plummeted while some 5.5 million Zimbabweans will need food aid by Jan.
2004. A severe outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has also ensured from the
programme, prompting the government to commit additional resources for the
importation of vaccines.

But the government still has another task to accomplish. Since banks are
unlikely to lend to farmers with no title to land that in the majority of
cases is still the subject of litigation, the government has to step in and
provide loans or inputs to the newly resettled farmers. Two months before
the rainy season, there is also no seed on the market. That, too, might have
to be imported, raising fears that the seed might not be ideally suited for
local conditions. Nyathi says for Mugabe to have urged his party colleagues
to hand over their extra farms was proof that the land reform exercise was
unplanned and haphazard in the first place. "What fascinates Zanu PF on the
land issue is the way that whites have been beaten down and demoralised,"
Nyathi says, referring to the small pool of white landowners, many of whom
have been driven off their farms. The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), which
represents the landowners who controlled about 70 percent of the country's
productive land, says over 11 million hectares of land, or 6,400 farms have
been gazetted for acquisition in the last three years. "The danger, we are
facing now, is that we have a lot of people being put on the land and
someone else holding the title deeds," says an official with the CFU who
preferred to remain anonymous. Many of the evicted farmers are contesting
the process which they have deemed illegal. "It's a legal quagmire that has
to be sorted out when the country returns to normal," says the CFU official.

Pretoria - The Wildcare Africa Trust's offer to treat an elephant whose leg
has been caught in a snare in Zimbabwe has received positive response from
authorities, the trust's director, Karen Trendler, said on Tuesday.

An official from the trust had been in contact with Dr Morris Mtsambiwa,
director-general of the Zimbabwean Parks and Wildlife Authority, she told
Sapa.

"He is very, very keen that we help."

A Beeld reporter on a boat trip on the Kariba dam recently spotted the young
elephant with the snare still on its front leg. The wire has caused an open
wound.

Wildcare Africa specialises in rescuing and rehabilitating animals.

"Before we can move at all, and start planning, we need to get permission
from the director-general of parks and wildlife," Trendler said.

Mtsambiwa, who was attending the World Parks Congress in Durban, expected to
be back in his office later in the week. He undertook to follow up the
matter and to establish, through rangers on the ground, the status of the
elephant.

"From there we can start."

It was just a matter of logistical arrangements, she said.

The rescue mission would need a team of people, drugs to dart the elephant
and petrol - a scarce commodity in Zimbabwe.

Once there, an experienced wildlife veterinarian would dart the elephant
before the snare was removed. Long-acting antibiotics would be administered
to help heal the wound, Trendler said.

Botswana has started erecting a 500-kilometre electric fence on part of its
border with Zimbabwe to stop an influx of humans and livestock, dismaying
Zimbabwean officials who claim that southern Africa is building its version
of the Israeli security wall.

Almost 2.5 metres high, the wall will snake through scrubland that is a
crossing point for refugees and illegal immigrants fleeing economic and
political hardships in Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe.

About 150 kilometres of fence have been erected so far, with some sections
already electrified. Botswana hopes to finish construction this year, when
immigration officers, reinforced by police and army units, will patrol the
barrier.

Illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe have already torn down parts of the fence
which their government has condemned as an affront to human rights.

Botswana has defended the fence as a legitimate response to the threat posed
by unemployed Zimbabweans and stray cattle carrying foot-and-mouth disease.

Although Botswana is larger in area than Zimbabwe, its population of 1.7
million feels tiny and vulnerable compared with its neighbour's 11.8
million. The arrival of about 60,000 Zimbabweans has stirred resentment and
fuelled claims that many are criminals and spongers.

Authorities in the capital, Gaborone, said it was the biggest immigration
problem since independence from Britain in 1966 and that 2500 people were
being repatriated each month.

Botswana's representative at the United Nations, Alfred Dube, said: "We are
concerned about what is going on [in Zimbabwe].

"It is very unfortunate that we have our houses being burgled every day and
our children being harassed. We understand why our people are saying that
the Zimbabweans must go."

Accusing their hosts of xenophobia, Zimbabweans said they came in search of
sanctuary and work, not for trouble.

Ties between Botswana and Zimbabwe, soured by President Festus Mogae's
criticism of Mr Mugabe's controversial policies, have worsened because of
the border fence.

Zimbabwe's high commissioner in Gaborone, Phelekeza Mphoko, accused Botswana
of creating a new Gaza Strip.

"People will continue to destroy the fence because it has divided families
on either side of the border," he told the Botswana Gazette.

 Nigeria has bluntly told Mr Mugabe he will be excluded from the next
Commonwealth summit unless he agrees to share power with his country's
opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, a senior Commonwealth
official said on Monday.

Britain's Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and several other leaders have made it
clear they will boycott the Commonwealth meeting in Abuja in December if Mr
Mugabe attends, the official said.

The Guardian; The Telegraph, London

ANZ officials submitted registration and application forms

Staff Reporter

Senior officials from Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, publishers of The
Daily News and the Daily News On Sunday, whose newspapers were shut down
last week by the government, yesterday submitted registration and
application forms to the government-appointed Media and Information
Commission in Harare to enable them to resume operations. The company was
represented by its legal advisor, Gugulethu Moyo, operations director,
Innocent Kurwa and finance director, Brian Mutsau. Speaking after submitting
the application forms, Moyo said: "We paid a registration fee of $500 000
and an application fee of $20 000." The Zimbabwe Supreme Court ruled on
Thursday last week that it would not hear an ANZ application on the
constitutionality of the section relating to registration which makes it
mandatory for media houses to register with the commission. The Supreme
Court ruled that the company should first comply with the draconian Access
to Information and Protection of Privacy Act before its application could be
heard.

Friday evening, armed riot police and intelligence officers swooped on the
eight-story ANZ offices in the city centre and its printing factory in the
industrial areas of Harare and ordered all employees out. The Daily News
editor, Nqobile Nyathi and Simon Ngena, the production manager were
questioned briefly by the police on Friday. Moyo said they had also been
ordered to supply all copies of newspapers published from 31 December 2002
to date. By yesterday afternoon, the ANZ premises were still sealed off by
heavily armed riot police. Moyo said according to section Eight of the
Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, after submitting their
registration papers, they were supposed to resume operations. The Act reads:
"During the consideration of its application applicant shall be permitted to
continue to carry on the activities of the mass media service, operate the
news agency, work as a journalist or operate the representative offices as
the case may be until his application has been determined." Moyo said the
ANZ chief executive officer, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, was expected to appear at
the local magistrates court for operating illegally. Moyo late yesterday
said they were preparing an urgent application to the High Court, compelling
the police to allow ANZ employees to continue operations.

Daily News closure remains indefinite

Windhoek - The Chairperson of Zimbabwe's Media and Information Commission,
Tafataona Mahoso says that the closure of the Daily News is indefinite even
if the paper registered with his Commission. Mahoso told the state owned
Sunday Mail newspaper that the registration process involved evaluation of
the information submitted on the forms and this can take longer. No time
frame was given as to when this might happen. "Arriving at the doorsteps
(MIC) does not mean that they will be registered. It was them who went to
the court to report their crime and not us," said Mahoso. The Daily News
legal advisor Gugulethu Moyo told the Zimbabwe chapter of the Media
Institute of Southern Africa (MISA-Zimbabwe) that she has submitted the
Daily New's registration forms with the Media and Information Commission,
headed by Mahoso. The closure of the Daily News has been roundly condemned
by media organisations in Zimbabwe and internationally as a blow on press
and freedom of expression.